Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture (Music in American Life) - Softcover

Mahar, William J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252066960 ISBN 13: 9780252066962

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1998

Synopsis

Promises to redefine the study of blackface minstrelsy, charting new directions for future inquiries by scholars in American studies, popular culture, and musicology

About this title

Review:

"Make[s] available much valuable and fascinating material found nowhere else in the literature on blackface minstrelsy, so much so that Behind the Burnt Cork Mask can itself serve as a primary source for further research." -- Charles Hamm, Journal of the American Musicological Society

From the Publisher:

Praise from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY--
"In BEHIND THE BURNT CORK MASK...William J. Mahar delves into one of the hottest issues in cultural studies, the meaning of blackface in American culture. Using a wealth of archival research, including newspaper ads and playbills, he argues for a complex understanding of minstrelsy as a meeting ground of many cultures; it was not only the contact point between European- and African-Americans, he asserts, but a place through which the songs of Italian and English opera, for instance could enter into American popular awareness."

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0252066960
• ISBN 13: 9780252066962
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 472